No less than Italy's Prime Minister Romano Prodi attended the march, was organised by the Transnational Radical Party and promoted by the Italian NGO "No Peace Without Justice" to lobby for the ICC at negotiations that end this week.

Beneath darkening skies, a growing crowd of activists gathered in front of Rome's town hall, the Campidoglio, above the Forum. They waved multicoloured banners, and held bright yellow balloons that read "Yes - International Criminal Court".

The crowd, made up mostly of youngsters but also older folk, sported baker-like white baseball caps and billboards that displayed slogans in many languages: "Nunca Mais", "No Alibis. The ICC Must Be Established on July 17" read some of them.

A penny-farthing painted orange and gold had a huge doll balanced on its handle-bars wearing a baseball cap and a billboard that read "USA Forget Democracy". One large green banner said "Yes to Justice", in English and Chinese. "I Care Because I Have A Dream" read a Radical Party banner, the same statement endorsed by some 700 people who have been fasting since July 7 for the creation of an ICC.

"I wanna be that number - when the saints go marching in," sang Charlie Cannon and the group Voices in Transit from a podium flanked by roses, as drops of rain started to fall and a town-hall official resolutely set out a dozen or so pretty little red and gold dignitaries' chairs.

This signalled the arrival of Prodi and a sunburned mayor of Rome, Francesco Rutelli, surrounded by policemen, photographers and journalists, who thrust mikes under Prodi's nose for comment and blocked views of the mega-screen where European Commissioner Emma Bonino was to come on air.

Officials held off the press, and Prodi and Rutelli were able to take their seats. "The stakes are very high at the Rome ICC Conference, and the Torch-Light March is not a criticism of its work, but is encouraging the Conference to conclude its work satisfactorily," a somewhat fuzzy-imaged Bonino told the crowd via the video-conference. "It's a sacrosanct battle," she said in a play on words, referring to the route along the Via Sacra, an ancient Roman triumphal road.

Prodi agreed: "The Torch-Light March is of great external importance - its historic route shows the importance our country assigns to the favourable conclusion of this Conference. There's great involvement, not abandonment, and we must march forward as we are doing tonight."

As the Campidoglio glowed in a late burst of sunlight, and rooftop flags fluttered in the evening breeze, the procession descended on the floodlit Forum. Under the Arch of Septimius Severus, past the Temple of Antonius Faustina and the haunting ruins of the Basilica Massentius and Nero's Domus Aurea the crowd walked, along giant flagstones.

Just after the Colosseum, at the Arch of Constantine, the marchers gathered torches, bearing them along the last half-mile under the Palatine hill to the entrance of FAO, where they halted. As irate motorists honked, ICC President Giovanni Conso told the many hundred torch-bearers: "We have to get an agreement even if it means stopping the watches." Alison Dickens